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My connection disappeared one day with no warning - after three weeks of speaking to technical support in India, who just kept repeating whatever i was saying but could not actually get my internet connection up and running, i gave up and left Orange/Wanadoo. The worst service i have ever encountered

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Wanadoo have run before they can walk

Been a wanadoo customer for a while now and are constantly havin problems. My current problem is with their wireless and talk. i recieved the livebox, started to follow instructions and found the livebox was locked and i needed a recovery cd. Contact wanadoo, recieve the cd 5 days later, cd does not work> they sent the wrong cd. contact them, cd should be here 3-5 days, day 7, no cd and wanadoo refuse to talk to me now because i am 16. This is stupid because i know more about this then my parents and it is easier if i sort it myself.

the only thing i can compliment wanadoo for is actually having employees that understand and speak english.

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they are a bad company

wanadoo say that your payment will be taken off of your bank on a serton date of the month, but they dont. with me me it is ment to come off on the 10th of every month, but would come off on the 20, 21. when i have sent them emails regarding paying into there account the said no they are now charging me 3 months in one go which i find so unfair. i would not recommened them to anyone.

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Freeservrve and Wanadoo now excel!

I have personally been using freeserve/wanadoo for about 18 months. During this period we have experienced only one minor service outage and consistently good data transfer rates.

The qualities of the technical support services have been consistently excellent in my opinion.The only time i thought that they were wrong and indeed i was cursing at my technical support, my little girl had unplugged the ADSL connection while i was half way through the call. (Sorry whoever i was talking to on that day!)

The speed of the service (I have 2MB ADSL) is really superb. With 2MB ADSL most web servers cannot provide a download at this speed, with multiple downloads the speed has always been up to my high expectations.

I would certainly recommend freeserve/wanadoo to any home user. If they offered an unlimited package, I would be using them for all my work sites as I have been impressed with them. Sadly, because of the 30GB usage limit it makes it impractical.

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I originally started of with a Freeserve Pay As You Go internet access account about 5 years ago, however about a year or so ago I began to use the net more and more and decided that for the cost of an anytime package I may as well switch my account to a Freeserve broadband account. At a cost of £27.99 for an unlimited account it seemed worth while, so I placed my order on line.

The modem etc that I received from Freeserve was free and there was no installation cost as it was a DIY step by step set up. The package from them arrived in about 3 days if I remember rightly. The modem was a Speedtouch ADSL modem that like others plugs directly into a spare USB port on the back of the PC. As this was my first external modem, as all the others were internal, I thought I was going to get a huge great big thing but to my surprise my broadband modem was about the size of a computer mouse.

On reading the set up instructions it turns out you have to wait for them to set up your line in order that you can make calls and use the net at the same time. They told me the only way that I would know would be to plug in my modem and wait until both lights went green but this could take up to 14 days. Oh great, I thought I have got the equipment but another 2 weeks to wait. Well I was wrong! I plugged in the modem and 2 green lights appeared, my line was set up before I even had received the modem. Now that what I call a quick response.

The installation itself was very simple; it was purely a matter of plugging the modem into the PC and the phone socket. Not forgetting to use the ADSL splitters to split your line. Then insert the CD that comes with it into your PC CD drive and allow it to auto run. This software installs the modem driver software and the freeserve software required for broadband. This process all in all took around 10 minutes.

Once the install is complete you get 2 new icons on your desktop, one for the modem software and one titled Freeserve broadband. I already had a Freeserve Internet icon on the desktop, however if you were not with Freeserve when you set this up then you would also get this icon as well. From then on to access the net via broadband was a matter of switching the PC on and waiting for the two green lights which appear within seconds of windows loading. Then double clicking the broadband icon which loads your connection, and then double clicking the internet icon which presents you with the Freeserve homepage.

The only change that was made to my user name when I switched to broadband was that @fs was added to the end of it. Other than that you would not notice the change as all email addresses etc staid the same, I have to admit now I have broadband I would not go back.

About 4 months ago I received an email from Freeserve customer services informing me that Freeserve would be no longer the same; they had been taken over by an international company called Wanadoo. Who? I had no idea either but apparently this would not effect my internet so fair enough we would see how things go as I was still on my 12 month contract, one good thing was that my email address did not have to change.

Now every time I log onto the net I get a new homepage www.wanadoo.co.uk, it still looks pretty much like the old Freeserve pages only its out with the bright orange colour scheme and in with a darkish red colour scheme.

Since then I have had various emails from them asking me to switch to a Wanadoo broadband account but to do so I would have to pay a £20 admin fee. I think not, I was quite happy with my old Freeserve account.

I thought that as my 12 month contract comes to an end in October or November (I cant remember which) I would take a look at what they offer as I knew they had changed the broadband options to 3 new Wanadoo Broadband options. On first looking they seemed worth switching as they have 3 options two of which are less than I pay now. The new Wanadoo options are:

Option 1... £17.99 per month

2GB allowance per monthThis is ideal for the vast majority of people, and offers all the advantages of a super fast Broadband connection - up to 20 times faster than a normal dial-up connection - at only a fraction of the price. Use the phone and the Internet at the same time Always-on connection - no waiting to dial-up Wireless connection with Wireless Pack (optional at £79.99)

Option 2...£22.99 per month

6GB allowance per month

This is a great choice if you want all the benefits of super fast Broadband - up to 20 times faster than dial-up - and plan to download a lot. Use the phone and the Internet at the same time Always-on connection - no waiting to dial-up Wireless connection with Wireless Pack (optional at £79.99) Connect multiple computers with Wireless Pack (optional at £79.99)

Option 3...£27.99 per month

30GB allowance per month - up to 20 times* faster than dial-up!Use the phone and the Internet at the same time Always-on connection - no waiting to dial-up Wireless connection with Wireless Pack (optional at £79.99) Connect multiple computers with Wireless Pack (optional at £79.99

The options are direct from the Wanadoo site in order to give you the exact info about their options, as you can see they are all based on a 1Mbps as opposed to 512k broadband so its 20 time faster than the normal internet access you have to dial into. I am hoping that when my 12 months is up they will give me the option to transfer without paying the admin fee as at present my Freeserve account is 512K, the only downside to these is that they all have a limit per month, however option 3 has a huge limit and you would have to do some serious down loads to reach that limit.

Since the take over not a lot else has changed and most of the time their customer service has been pretty good and their broadband tech support team are there 24/7 unfortunately the calls to them are charged at national rates, so its not free phone unlike some providers offer. However online email help is available.

Some other benefits of joining them:

&#61656; Wanadoo Rewards. No points to collect, just exclusive member benefits and offers from big name brands, along with some competitions and it has to be said some of these are quite good offers&#61656; Email addresses for the whole family&#61656; Online Help channel providing free advice and support by email &#61656; 30MB of free web space for up to 5 personal websites if you can create that many, but they do have options available to help you with this&#61656; Quick Search facility &#61656; Fortnightly email newsletter on the latest member news, online shopping deals and tools and services which can contain some useful and not so useful information&#61656; Wanadoo magazine showing you how to get the most out of the Internet The homepage has a list of channels on the left hand site ranging from Money, Auctions, Property, Travel etc etc there is even a channel for Women. In each of these channels is some real useful information about the relevant topic.Overall over all of the time I have been with Freeserve / Wanadoo I have never really had any major problems but those I have had have been solved very quickly and effectively and their customer service team are always willing to help. Definitely worth the money! And there is none of this taking over your PC like AOL.

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"Bad customer services"

Once upon a time there was a woman who had a good quality internet connection. She then moved and opted for Freeserve "Anytime" package. After a few months of difficulties and then an even shorter amount of time with a good quality service it all went downhill. Not even its new incarnation as Wanadoo could give this story a happy ending.

When Freeserve first came on the market they were an absolute godsend. As one of the first Internet Service Providers to charge its users at local rates they helped to bring down the cost of the internet for the average man on the street. As my parent's still use the internet relatively infrequently, they still find this the most cost effective way to access the internet. For them Freeserve has been a happy story. A few years ago they had a few months of difficulties dialing up, but other than that they have experienced exemplary service.

On this basis and on the recommendations of various friends I signed up to Freeserve's "Anytime" package. Which will offer: unlimited email addresses for the whole family accessible from any PC (although this was five when I signed up), 30MB for up to five personal websites, a fortnightly newsletter, access to a website skewed towards celebrity style news and an "online Help Channel providing free advice and support by email".

From the start I encountered difficulties, but was placated slightly by the low introductory offer of £9.99 per month for the first three months. Some of these problems could, in part, have been put down to the ancient PC I was using; but my instincts suggested that this was incorrect as NTL had provided me with good service using the same computer in my previous flat.

Getting a response from Freeserve was difficult to say the least - especially as the customer services email address seemed to be buried on their site. I then followed the instructions in various automated responses. For instance, it could be something to do with call waiting disrupting the signal on the line, or maybe it was that the gain (strength of signal through the phone line) needed to be turned up. Finally contact was made with a human. Apparently, the real live person informed me, it had to be something wrong with my computer as the correct number of people were using the numbers I had been allocated.

When a gleaming new computer replaced my antiquated PC things did improve. For a few months...

Things are now in an even worse situation than they were before. At times it has taken me up to seven attempts to connect to the internet. By this I don't mean that that the Freeserve Connection Kit - which enables your computer to dial a variety of numbers doesn't connect immediately - has dialled seven times. I mean that I have had to shut that down and start it up again seven times. (This has taken up to an hour at times). When I do actually manage to get online there is no guarantee that I will encounter the two hours of interrupted service before it automatically disconnects. Often I will attempt to load a page and find that I need to dial up in order to do so. Using MSN Messenger also becomes a problem - the connection is so weak that it cannot be used unless you attempt to reconnect again! (33.2 Kbps is about average at the moment, that is not much over 50% of the modem speed - 54Kbps - and it has dropped as low as 20Kbps before). This means that pages take an age to load; and there is no certainty that the connection will not suddenly drop. I'm no expert, but I don't think it's unacceptable to expect to be able to connect to Freeserve at, at least, 40Kbps. Tasks that should take one hour now take three - on a good day.

Instead of going through the automated email responses a letter was sent first class to Freeserve Customer Services. After nearly a month a reply arrived asking me to give details of my account and my mobile number in order that an engineer could contact me. Suitable times were given. Instead of receiving a phonecall promptly, another letter turned up.

... more than three weeks later... and this time the letter is an automated response...

...not only that, but it seems to ignore the information sent in my first letter which I sent two months ago...

Possibly ringing the Freeserve Customer Care premium rate line would have speeded things up, but stop me if I'm wrong, but why should I run up further costs to find out what is wrong with a service I am paying for them to provide. Although if you do try and cancel your subscription you'll find that another local rate number miraculously appears. Its rather pointless ringing it though, they'll just tell you it is your equipment that's at fault anyway.

At the moment I might as well be burning money as I waste hours attempting to get online, stay online and do the most basic tasks using a connection speed that is 75% slower than I should expect; leaving me wondering why I pay £14.99 a month to Wanadoo/Freeserve. Surely they should pay me to continue using their "Service", or should I be renaming them myself as an "Internet S*** Provider"? After all, service isn't even a word they seem to apply to their Customer Care Department either - not unless your idea of service is ignoring the customer and hoping they and their problem will go away. Cynically they may be seen to be trying to push Anytime users into using their Broadband service, but surely they must be able to see that receiving bad service from one part of the business is not going to inspire you to try another part - especially as it will cost you more. Nothing in the world could induce me to continue using them. Not even that irritating ad campaign.

I'll give them one extra star for the temporary improvement in the service that appears to have occured recently. Its not enough to make me stay though, or convince me that they do actually offer something that constitutes service.

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"Complex set up"

Let me tell you a story....... I have been on the internet for six months now and originally signed up for the freeserve anytime package because it was cheap and very simple to use. At £5.99 for the first three months you can't really complain especially as with FSmail with its anti spam filter and generous 2MB webspace it was a bit of a godsend. But wait my story gets better. After a hassle free three month trial I thought what the hell lets get Freeserve Broadband (with five people fighting over phone and internet it was getting difficult to get any ciao time!). It was also on offer at £15.99 (rising to £27.99 after) three months and the spiel on the freeserve homepage claimed easy access and hassle free connection. They also promise your existing connection will be maintained for two weeks while awaiting activiation. On accessing the sign up page through the freeserve home page, lo and behold there was a simple online form to complete. This included a handy tool which detected both if your computer was suitable and whether freeserve broadband was an option in your area. Along with that were the usual debit details, address etc. At this point may I stress that they mention a ten day waiting period for Broadband to be activated. Just three days later (16th April) I received my modem and connection kit through the post. Carefully reading the step-by-step instructions which warn not to connect the modem until the autoplay installation disk has been configured I put the broadband disk in the CD rom drive. The modem drivers autosetup and told me to plug in my modem to my USB port. After doing this the last step of the instructions told me to plug he modem into the filter and the filter into the telephone socket. This was all simple enough and I sat back for a few days waiting for the flashing green light on my modem to stop flashing (as this is when broadband is connected). However, in the meantime my freeserve anyt ime connection stopped working. After eight phonecalls to the premium rate helpline (totalling around £30!)in which I was told to do various different things by people who all spoke rapidly from cues on a computer; I was finally told to take the broadband modem out, as this interferes with my anytime connection. I was further informed that I should not have installed my modem until the activation date (which the instructions make no mention of and I had to phone freeserve broadband customer services for!) On three seperate phone calls I was given three activation dates the 23rd, 26th and 28th of April. Freeserve anytime customer services further informed me that my internal modem was now corrupted and needed re-installing. They also told me to format my hard drive and re-install Windows 98. They failed to mention this would disable my USB ports and as I didn't have the drivers has since cost me £15 for a computer technician to reconfigure. So, on the story goes. My Windows 98 is back but I have no internet connection. Suddenly my green light turns on! Hey, Broadband here we come! Stop! The Freeserve page loads fine and almost instantaneously but no other sites are accessible! Back on the phone to freeserve broadband they say my security setting is too high. I check, its not. Back again. They say try running ad-aware and delete all the results. I do and my connection is completely severed as they failed to mention not to delete the registry key needed for access! I re-install my modem and connect. Wahey! Success! Wait, there is a twist to the tale. Whenevver, we get a phonecall it interferes and disconnects are internet. Also, the phone line crackles. Back on the phone. Customer services suggest rj11 cable. We buy some. No improvement. They suggest buying a corded rather than cordless phone. We buy one. No improvement. Freeserve now have no further suggestions and claim as there pages loa d fine it is not there fault. Today I contacted BT and an engineer came out and discovered the filters were in wrong. My broadband now works perfectly (touch wood!) and is fast, efficient and easy to use. Just a pity it took all this stress to get there eh. If I wasn't on a twelve month contract and am too weary with it all to change I would change provider but there you go.

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"No service"

We chose Wanadoo Broadband (previously Freeserve) as when we connected in October ?03, the price of £27.99 was one of the cheapest around and we were already using Freeserve?s Dial-Up service. We were connected within a couple of weeks and had no problems with the service until we moved home and tried to move our Broadband connection with us. Having Broadband was like a breath of fresh air - no waiting for dial up to connect us, you can use your phone at the same time, high speed internet access and it is easy to install the modem yourself. To connect to Wanadoo you have to ensure that you have a USB port, a BT phoneline, a suitable debit or credit card and Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 Professional or XP. Mac OS 8.6 or higher. Wanadoo's £27.99 internet package gives you a speed of 512K, which I have always found more than adequate and never had more than a second or two delay in browsing between "pages" on the net. You have a download limit of 15 Gigabytes. Now I won't pretend to know just how much this means but we have never reached our limit and we download numerous music, videos and information from the net, problem free. We had picked up a deal in Dixons, purchasing a modem and two free months connection with Freeserve for £49.99. As I have said, the Modem was easy to set up requiring you to enter a CD and install Broadband via a simle installation program. Connecting the modem was made easy to with diagrams and photo's showing you how to connect. We then waited a couple of weeks and our Broadband connection was up and running. During the whole seven months we had Wanadoo Broadband in our previous home we had no problems what-so-ever. Our problems began when we tried to move our Broadband connection. Our dealings with Wanadoo?s customer service have been nothing short of truly appalling. We have been continually lied to and have been given nothing but broken promises. A month and a half on and we still have no Broadband and we are pulling our hair out with frustration. We first contacted Wanadoo on 31st May to inform them of a change of address. As we had only moved to the flat next door, we were able to keep our phone number. We contacted them to move our Broadband connection to our new home, and this is when our troubles with Wanadoo began. We were annoyed to find that this would cost us £25 as we had only moved next door but we were told it was a standard charge. The person we spoke to informed us we would be connected to our broadband service within twenty days. Twenty days passed and we still had no connection so we called Wanadoo again and we were then told it would be twenty ?working? days and that we were not due to be reconnected until the 28th June, the twentieth working day. We found this very frustrating, and it turned out to be the second time they told us something untrue. When we checked the connection on the 28th June, we found it still had not been reconnected and so my husband called again. The man he spoke to told him that the service had in fact been reconnected and that it must be a problem with the modem and / or the phone line. He talked us through a number of tests, but because my husband is a trained computer professional, he had already discounted the modem as the fault. He then contacted BT for us and told us that BT had checked the previous phone line for us and not the line we had asked to be checked. He told us we would have to wait another five working days for the connection to be made. This was the third time we were told something that later turned out to be untrue. I found this to be completely unacceptable and phoned to complain. I spoke with someone who promised me she would speak with a supervisor on our behalf. She returned my call later that night, offering us a month?s free connection, as we had been charged £27.99 for a month?s worth of Internet we had not been provided with. Also, by now, they had not fulfilled your twenty working days connection promise so we were offered a second month free to cover the £25 reconnection fee. After a few days I called again and this time I was told that Broadband had not even been ordered for us ? nor was there a record of any conversations between the call centre and myself. I was then told to wait another ten working days. I was furious at this and asked to speak to a supervisor or manager. I was promised I would get a call back from one so I waited in all day but got no call. I called again to complain and was promised yet again that a manager would call me back. Again I was disappointed and, by now, was extremely angry with the customer service I have received. I had never had a problem with Wanadoo until I moved and needed reconnection. I have been so annoyed and frustrated at their level of customer service and continuous broken promises. I phoned back to ensure that Wanadoo had begun the process of reconnecting but again they had not. As a Manager had not phoned as back our request to get back on line had not be fulfilled. We have since emailed them to complain but have received no reply. We have been ?promised? again that we will be reconnected within ten days but as my husband says ?frankly I have more faith that the moon is actually made of low-fat cheese. And possibly Branston's sandwich pickle.? I have not phoned them again to see if we are due to be reconnected as I am sick to the back teeth of waiting on the phone for up to an hour to be lied to! So basically we have had no Broadband for a month and a half and counting. We have used dial-up connection to check emails but have been unable to surf the internet due to the frustrating speed of the service. I don?t know how many people regularly read and rate using dial up but it is just so slow to register a rating and move between pages. I am furious with the quality of service we have received from Wanadoo. They have ignored our phone calls and emails and have made us chase to have our Broadband reconnected which should have automatically be done. I dread to think how many hours we have wasted on the phone to Wanadoo. Use them at your peril!! Thanks for reading, Em XX

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"Just like me

really!"

This is a really weird opinion to write. I am writing as someone who, very recently, broke up a longstanding relationship. It was acrimonious and I didn't want to have to, but I did it, because I knew that in the long run I would be better off. Let me take you back... In 1998 I joined the internet revolution with my trusty Pentium 166 computer and my 33k modem. After a brief flirtation with another ISP, I settled down into a cosy relationship with Freeserve, as it was the first ISP to offer just call charges with no monthly subscription. Life with Freeserve was bliss. Well, it had to be, as I met my wife on the internet. Reasonably fast connection and all that jazz. In 2000 we joined up with 'Unlimited Freeserve'. a service that gave us cheaper phone calls and a 24/7 charge free internet service. Life, as you can imagine, was ultimate bliss. Then my chosen partner became a touch big-headed and self-centred. We received an email saying Unlimited Freeserve was coming to an end, and we would have to firstly pay more and secondly join 'Freeserve Anytime'. This promised everything, call-charge free access, cream cakes and a cigarette after sex. Okay, I admit it, that's a lie, as cakes were not part of the deal. All was okay until it became even more difficult to access the service. Continual engaged tones, slow access (by now I was on a 56k modem but could only get 33000 bits per second), and calls to Freeserve's customer services gave us a new access number, which proved to be even worse than the original! After a while we gave up on anytime, and joined hometime, while we joined up with ITV Digital (look, I know they were a shower but we only paid one month's rental before they went belly up and gave us a free set-top box, so there!). This wasn't much better, but at least we weren't paying £14 per month for an engaged tone. Later we joined anytime again and everything was fine until Mar ch this year, when our local exchange in Herefordshire was broadband enabled.... We had heard that Freeserve had schemes to keep customers migrating from anytime (£19 per month, free connection and free modem), so I rang up... Day One- the screen froze at Freeserve's HQ - 'Please try later' Day Two - The screen froze again - 'we'll be in touch' Day Five - they got in touch - 'all sorted, all gone through, you'll get your modem in a week and will be connected by 19th April' - Orgasmic, my son! Day 18 - I ring up... Me: Hello, where's my modem? FS: Er.. there has been a snag. We'll send another one out. April 25th Me: how' the order going? FS: What order? Me: My broadband order. FS: 1- Oh, the order went through but no-one told BT to activate your number. It's best you cancel and start again. I'll put you through to an advisor. 2- You haven't received your free modem because you cancelled the order. Me: When did I cancel the order? F/serve: Today. Me: You told me to! F/S: I'll pass you on to someone. 3- You cancelled your order on the 25th. Me: You told me this. F/S: It was cancelled on the 19th automatically. Me: Why? F/S: It's just automatic. As is the order going through to BT. Me: I was told no-one told BT. F/S: Your address doesn't come up on our system. Me: It did 10 minutes ago. F/S: Your area isn't broadband enabled. Me: Er.... yes it is. F/S: You'll have to re-register. Me: Okay F/S: Are you a new customer or an anytime migrant? Me: Anytime migrant. F/S: We've run out of offer codes. Ring back tomorrow. Me: This is your problem. Find one! F/S: We can't. Oh, hang on! This code work s. 5 minutes later. F/S: There's a problem with the final page of the registration process. It's something we are aware of with other customers. Ring back tomorrow. Five weeks later I got an email from Freeserve, sorry Nevadoo, saying that I couldn't have broadband on my number. I emailed them from my new broadband account with Pipex. It's not that they are a bad ISP per se, just that they have become a victim off their own success and customer service is a joke - you feel like you have to apologise for disturbing them! As an ISP they rate about 4 stars. With the appalling way they treat customers and refuse to acknowledge their inadequacies, as well as the increased contention (number of people fighting for availability on one line), this has to drop. I'm sorry Wanadoo, as they say in the carnivore's valedictory speech: 'Sirloin, it's been good to gnaw you!' Neil July 2004

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n/a

If you are reading this then you probably have internet access of some description, be it from home or work. If you are reading this from work and are considering going online at home, or you are just after a new ISP for your home access then look no further than Freeserve. I use Freeserve Anytime (fixed monthly payment for unlimited access via a free phone number) but I have in the past used to standard freeserve system (no subscription charges, you just pay the phone bill) and all that I write below about reliability, access speed etc. applies for that as well. I have been a Freeserve user for a number of years now and can highly recommend them. Their service just keeps getting better and better. We will start at the beginning. Firstly, Freeserve is very easy to setup on you PC. You can collect a free installation CD at many shops round the country, including Dixons and PC World, or if you are already online with another provider you can download the software from www.freeserve.co.uk. On activation of the installation you are quickly and easily guided through the procedure. You just tap in your details when prompted and the program does the rest. The installation and setup process via the CD takes about 10 minutes. If you download the software the time will depend on the download time. Once installed you are given a very useful popup screen with all your account details which you can print off and store. Saves you trying to remember all your passwords etc. Now you are set to browse the web and email. Connecting couldn?t be easier, just open up your internet browser or email program and the dialup connection box will pop up automatically and you can set this to dial automatically or upon prompting by you. Dialup and password verification takes a matter of seconds and you are then connected and free to do what you wish. 99% of the time you will connect straight away but every so often you may get a line busy mess age (only at peak times e.g. 6pm -8pm) but the software will redial automatically and the maximum number of attempts I have had to wait was three. Generally you get through on the second attempt. This may sound poor service but I have tried a number of other providers over the years and at peak times I have sometimes not been able to connect at all! Once connected the connection is always fast, generally I get a connection speed of 50Kb/s, with other systems I have only managed a maximum of 33Kb/s. The connection has always been reliable, I have never been disconnected, other systems frequently cut you off and with the greater b/s access is much quicker than others on offer. With Freeserve you can either check you emails remotely via e.g. Outlook Express (you are given all the connection details required to set this up on the handy printout) or via a very easy to use email system on the freeserve web site which is also very handy for checking your email when away from home. If you do encounter any problems, or if you just have queries the Freeserve web page offers as much help as you will ever need. There are very detailed FAQs available, contact phone numbers and email support and unlike most email support you will generally get a reply within 24 hours. As for the price, I mention above you can have everything for the price of a phone call, or like me, if you use the internet often you can opt for the Anytime package and pay £14.99 a month for unlimited access and generally when you join for the first time you will get some form of money off. At the moment (September 2003) they offer the first three months at £9.99. In summary a very easy to use, reliable ISP with great customer care at a very reasonable price.

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I've been using the Internet for quite a few years now. When I first started using it there were no such things as unlimited access packages, you paid a subscription to a service provider and then you paid your calls on top of that. Needless to say I was raking up £70 a quarter on access charges alone. Then came the advent of freeserve that offered net access at no cost other than some advertising and marketing information. People were quick to be sceptical and there were teething problems when the service first came online. In the past couple of years Internet access has become a competitive market with quite a few companies offering various deals. The advent of broadband has also raised the bar in service levels and competition. I've been on Freeserve Anytime for about 18-months. I've saved a great deal of money in this time through only having to pay a flat monthly fee and no call charges for being online. Personally I've never really had a problem with the company until this week. Access speeds have on the whole been generally good. Sure they've been a few times when the servers couldn't cope with demand but quick service upgrades always corrected the problem. I never had to use the support as I've previously worked in computers and know how to sort most problems myself. Recently Freeserve brought in an 'anytime connection kit'. This was a download to your dialer that would look for the best possible connection in your area. Personally I didn't notice a difference in connection speed whatsoever. Instead what I got was some very annoying pop-ups. They weren't even ad banners but rather primitive advertising for sites that had web cam features. The content of these web cams was suggesting some unsavoury activity to say the least. Since removing said software I haven't experienced any of these pop-ups so I'd love to know what the actual point of this connection kit was. This week our ho usehold have gone onto Broadband. I?d always seen it as expensive and not worth the extra outlay but when NTL came round offering a 150k connection at £17.99 p/month with free installation etc then I was sold. This is because the combined cost of £14.99 freeserve subs and £10 on BT Line rental meant that I?d be saving near to £100 a year for a faster connection. This is where the problem with Freeserve came in. I called the customer line as listed on the freeserve website. "Hello I?d like to cancel my account please" "Certainly, you are aware that you?ve just paid for this coming month?" "Yes but I'd imagine you can just refund this because I haven't used it" "I'm sorry we can't do refunds" Cue a stunned silence, if I had paid for the month and nearly used it all then I would quibble but I paid on the 20th of this month and only used it until the 21st. £14.99 for a days access isn't a good deal. It seems Freeserve still have the Dixon's approach to customer service and getting a refund that you're entitled to. The service rep gave me the address to write to and I plan to because paying for something that you?re not using is frankly ludicrous. I have no faults with the service itself but this is incredibly annoying. I now have to write a letter to ask for my money back when I've paid by card and the refund should be simple. It's like walking into a store having been overcharged for something. Only you're told that you?ll have to do everything yourself to get your money back. It's because of this that I'd say to anyone to seriously consider not going to Freeserve if you value customer service.

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Well i would just like to advise anybody considering changing their isp (internet service provider) to freeserve, to do so now! I have had freeserve anytime for a couple of years, and it is great. It not only has the cheapest price for an anytime contract (you only pay a certain amouunt per month, and that is it), but offers a great service. If your connection to freeserve is slow, or takes a long time, there is a place on their website where you can type in your details, and get a new dial - up number that is more suited to you. At £12.99 a month, and connection speeds of 46.6 Kilobytes per second or up, freeserve is definately the number 1 ISP in the UK.

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I signed up for Freeserve HomeTime around a year ago, for the price of £6.99 per month or thereabouts, and recently noticed I was getting frequent disconnections. I e-mailed the company (not an easy thing to do, as they do not provide an e-mail address, instead they insit you wirte your question on the site and then send it to them) After two days I was told that Freeserve often randomly disconnect people if there is a jam. I was further told, insultingly, that if I did not want disconnections I should purchase broadband. I was not notified of these disconnections when I signed up, and I no longer use this deceptive service.

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I shall assess Freeserve's Anytime package in the aspect of that I have a second line. FS offers anytime access for £13.99 a month. Note: This is NOT "always-on". You dial in to the service, taking about 45 seconds, and then you are connected for two hours. After this you must redial. FS's customer support is generally good, billing is free but for technical support you'll be paying 50p a minute. If you leave it on 24 hours a day you will get barred, it's happened to me - and it's difficult to get your account re-enabled. On the whole, if you want to surf without worrying about the phone bill, this is a great package.

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I am from the US, and service is number one because if you can't or won't provide customer service then someone else will. I joined freeserve through there one month free sign-up promotional disc. To me...one month free means ONE MONTH FREE. I popped in their disc and continued through the process. I followed all the steps to join the anytime account. This gave me access to the internet. I then signed up for broadband service through the only provider in my area...you guessed it freeserve. When the telephone bill arrived I found I was billed 35.00 for the supposed one month free service. I called up freeserve where a snotty/rude kid named mike said that I had not signed up properly and that they had no record of my account, so freeserve ASSUMED that I wanted a pay as you go scheme. I told him I followed the instructions on the FREE disc. He told me that e-mail would have been sent out asking for my detalis...I replied to that by saying "funny thing I get 0 (zero) e-mails from you site. I checked every day and finally gave up. I asked to speak to a supervisor and he said that the supervisor would tell me the same thing. I told mike that I would like to hear that for myself. I waited for twenty minutes and then was cut off. I received no satisfaction, and if they were not the only provider in my area I WOULD BE GONE to an ISP with more CUSTOMER in their customer satisfaction policy!